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A Night and Day with Danijay!

A Night and Day with Danijay!

April 7th, 2017 / By: Wausti

Around one month after the first The Plaze Techno Night / Extravadance Reunion with DJ Lhasa (See article about this event here), it was announced that a Part 2 would be held on the 1st of April 2017 this time with another italo-legend, Danijay!... The last time Danijay was in Denmark was on a small local club called Laki in Store Heddinge (a city of only 3000 people) together with one of his singers Henry.

IDP was also present that night. For us it was one of the best italo-nights ever with the appearance of both Danijay and singer/vocalist Henry. The mood was happy and relaxed just like being among friends - at one point Henry came down from the stage (while singing) and stood among us and danced with us - awesome moment! Shortly after Dani was handed a beer from a guy in the crowd and took a few sips, and after the show we went outside and had a talk with Dani and Henry. That was 9 years ago.

As the last time with DJ Lhasa, we met up at Copenhagen Central Station to take the almost 2 hour long train ride down to the club (The Plaze) location, some joined along the way.We arrived 5 min. before the opening of the disco, and in front we met up with 3 guys who had traveled all the way from Turku, Finland to see Danijay, Jarkko and his two brothers. Jarkko had been an italo-fan since around 2005, but in Finland there has never been any italo-acts performing live - so now he thought it was about time when a party finally got relatively close to Finland (compared to going all the way to Italy).

All of us except one bought tickets from home, so we were sure to have a ticket and could jump the line through the VIP entrance - turned out that everyone else had bought tickets at home, so the queue was at the VIP entrance and no queue at all at the normal entrance - so much for the "skip the queue"-part! Anyway, it was a pretty nice evening with nice weather to stand out, and we stood there for max. 5 min so all was fine.

For the Lhasa-event we got t-shirts made on the day, but this time we were a bit better prepared - and even Dani ordered some for his crew! (Check out our webshop for merchandise)We entered the club, and headed straight for the bar! We decided to share a bottle to warm-up with, and found a table in a corner in the back, drank the bottle ...and suddenly there was dance/italo-classics pumping out of the speakers, and from that moment, we didn’t move away from the dancefloor

One of our friends, Rune, had arranged with Rimini-Peter (Organizer of the event and resident DJ) to film the event - and the IDP crew were also this time lucky to get “their VIP table” up on the stage, right next to the DJ-booth, many thanks to Rimini-Peter!Before Danijay arrived, Rimini-Peter and DJ Vision was “cooking on the stove” and they invited people up to dance on the stage just in front of the DJ-booth - which gave a much more relaxed and happy atmosphere: that people can come up where it’s normally not allowed, so awesome!

When Danijay arrived around 01:00 PM - Rimini asked everyone to get down from the stage, ‘cause now Danijay would play! Most people went down, but at the “IDP corner” the group of people had grown a bit big since we met a few of the old italo-guys from back in time… Most decided to leave the stage to give room for Danijay, but Dani didn’t mind, so people came back on stage to dance! Dani rox!

After that it was just full party on ‘till the early morning (See video further down). After Danijay’s show it was picture and autograph time and the IDP crew even got to talk a bit with Dani backstage, we even got to see a few of his family pictures

After that, Danijay went the long trip back to his hotel in Copenhagen. We continued partying a bit afterwards since we there was no trains going back to Copenhagen before 5 AM.

Sunday:

We had been writing with Dani up to the event, and talked about meeting up the day after to eat lunch together. We knew it would be tough, ‘cause we wouldn’t get much sleep ...but Rune and Michael thought this was a cool “once-in-a-lifetime”-experience and decided to go. We’ve followed Dani since 2003, so we just couldn’t miss this opportunity.

We met up with Dani and his friend Enrico who is a bit of a Gigi-fan with both necklace and mobile cover with the Gigi-symbol "Mon" on it - it turned out that he had been working for Gigi for about 10 years as his driver and helper. We met them at Copenhagen Central Station after only 4 hours of sleep. Dani had a desire to re-try the Nachos @ Hard Rock Café, cause the last time he was here it was amazing! or try one of the best burgers in the world from Gasoline Grill. Not very traditional Danish food for a sightseeing tour, but at least it was nice with fast food to go with your hangover

It ended up being Hard Rock Café, since it was closest, and Dani couldn’t stop thinking of the Nachos. We went in and enjoyed the food, and got a lot of great insider stories from the italo-world, very entertaining!

One of the best was one where Dani was sitting at home working on his famous hit-single “I Fiori Di Lilla” ...and he takes a break, and from the window he hears the “larilalaa”-voice from the neighbour's house, and he thinks to himself “WTF!?” How is this possible? I’m sitting here working on the track right now” and he goes to the neighbour to ask where he got that track from - and the guy says “It’s the new track by Danijay, I got it from Emule” (File sharing service) Danijay thinks: “Emule?! What?! How?! that’s not possible” ...and to this day it’s still a great mystery how it ended up on Emule.

During the lunch, Jarkko joined for a few minutes, and got his ‘Dance & Breakfast’ CD signed. In return he promised Danijay to try get him to play in Finland - plan! plan!

After lunch we went a bit sightseeing around Copenhagen in the nice weather before Dani and Enrico had to go to the airport - then we drove them to the hotel to pick up their bags, and when they returned Dani took out his Lenovo touch-screen "DJ Tablet" and starts mixing in the car on the way to the airport, so AWESOME! After a few minutes we arrived at the airport, and we got to the “Drop off”-point, but Dani is in the groove and keeps on mixing - still 30min until they have to be inside - so we drive one more round - then stop again at the “Drop off”-point once more, Dani keeps on mixing - so we decide to drive and park near by the airport to enjoy Danijay’s exclusive live mix ...Carpool - the DJ edition a perfect end to this amazing weekend of partying with Danijay which we have looked so much forward to.

We arranged with Dani to go see him playing in Italy this summer, so if anyone wanna go, you're welcome to join us

*Extravadance was almost what started the italo-mania in Denmark. A radio program on radio NRJ Energy one of the most popular FM radio stations in the 00s. Extravadance was a dance/techno music program playing all the latest italodance, techno and hard-trance. First with Rimini-Peter and MINIsteren, then Rimini-Peter and Jacob "The King" Lund. Later also DJ Janik joined before NRJ decided to shut down operations in Denmark.

*The Plaze, at the time the largest night club in Denmark, location in Nykøbing F. around 120 km from Copenhagen. Rimini-Peter opened the club after leaving the Extravadance program. The concept was to bring all the biggest artists from his radio program up to play live.